they were twins. They had little round, chubby bodies, bulging out
of red sweaters; little round, chubby faces, emerging from tall,
peaky, red-worsted caps. They had big round eyes as expressionless
as glass beads and big round golden curls as stiff as candles. They
stared so hard at Maida that she began to wonder nervously if her
face were dirty.

“Come in, little girls,” she called.

The little girls pattered over to the show case and looked in. But
their big round eyes, instead of examining the candy, kept peering
up through the glass top at Maida. And Maida kept peering down
through it at them.

“I want to buy some candy for a cent,” one of them whispered in a
timid little voice.

“I want to buy some candy for a cent, too,” the other whispered in a
voice, even more timid.

“All the cent candy is in this case,” Maida explained, smiling.

“What are you going to have, Dorothy?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know. What are you going to have, Mabel?” the other
answered. They discussed everything in the one-cent case. Always
they talked in whispers. And they continued to look more often at
Maida than at the candy.

“Have you anything two-for-a-cent?” Mabel whispered finally.